Darwin Cemetery is one of the saddest places in Latin America. Located in an inhospitable open field, where, as in the entire territory of the Falklands/Falklands, it is very windy. The only sound that can be heard are the rosaries hanging from the crosses, which collide with the movement of the air. Visits are very rare, the soldiers buried there have their families living mostly in distant provinces of Argentina. Traveling is expensive and hampered by bureaucracy. Most of the time, there is no one there. A caretaker passes between the tombs once or twice a week, to check if everything is ok, if anyone has tried to steal (they have tried) the image of the Virgin Mary that is in one of the corners of the cemetery, that’s all. Journalists and onlookers are few, but sometimes they appear.
One of the few novelties of the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War, which began on April 2, 1982, is that a large part of the graves in Darwin’s Argentine cemetery are now identified. When I was on the island, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the conflict, it was heartbreaking to see almost all the tombs with the inscription “Argentine soldier, only known to God”. In the rare visits promoted in solidarity actions by the Argentine and British governments so that family members would go there to visit a loved one _it is worth remembering that most of the 650 Argentine dead were boys who had recently started to do military service_ the relatives arrived, disoriented, and they would place flowers, hug or cry at random graves, as they did not know which one was their son, brother, husband or boyfriend.
The solidarity actions of both governments, which politically maintain the dispute for the sovereignty of the islands, should not be despised despite the war and electoral mishaps that have always accompanied them.
Here it is worth remembering that an initiative started in 2012 by former President Cristina Kirchner, and resumed by her rival and successor Mauricio Macri, with the support of the islands’ government, which finally managed to join efforts for the long-awaited identification of the bodies, which had already been tried on other occasions. , but always full of obstacles.
In 2016, the project was approved and teams from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (famous for the work of identifying bones in different parts of the world) landed on the island. The bad weather and the difficulty of working after so many years of the original burials created numerous problems. But the experts had a help that advanced years of work.
At the end of the conflict, in June 1982, the then British colonel Geoffrey Cardozo, took responsibility for documenting, as best he could, asking survivors, searching in their belongings, the possible identification of the human remains of the Argentines who had fallen on the islands. Many of them didn’t even make up a whole corpse, they were body parts. If, at that time, this rudimentary list did not serve to accurately identify who would be buried where _an operation that Cardozo himself coordinated_, nowadays, thanks to a genetic file set up by specialists, the comparison with the traces was possible.
Cardozo was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Although he did not win, he received immense recognition for his humanitarian attitude towards the losers of the war.
Today, of the 237 bodies buried in Darwin, 115 are identified. There has already been more than one special flight taking families to finally find the royal graves of their relatives, now with a plaque with their name and surname, and no longer the phrase “Argentine soldier, only known to God”.
In a country where the word “disappeared” carries such a weight, knowing where someone who died in a violent and, in the case of this war, unnecessary is buried is of immense value to the country and society.
A pity that, on this 40th anniversary, a scheduled new visit had to be cancelled, due to the island’s strict protocols for the entry of foreigners due to the coronavirus.
